“She died around six thirty yesterday morning,” Gus says.
“Huh?”
“Your victim here. Elizabeth Spears died around six thirty yesterday morning.”
“Seriously?”
“You really don’t remember how I work. Do you?”
“I guess not,” Mills tells him. “I’ll be curious to see if the ME agrees.”
They walk back to the trailhead. The only sound is their feet chewing at the ground and the reckless, argumentative chorus of birds overhead.
9
About an hour later Mills is in his office. He had stopped by to check on the staffing at South Mountain and to review photographs taken at the crime scene. He flipped through photo after photo looking for that one thing he had missed. Elizabeth Spears was on her back. She had not fallen. She was placed there. She was lowered to the ground. There were several photos of close-ups: her face, her neck, her hands, and her feet. They didn’t tell the whole story. They rarely did. How long had she suffered before she succumbed? How long had she been consciously terrified? The questions, he knew, were morbidly curious and nothing more. Those kinds of questions usually didn’t yield helpful answers, most often only answers that satisfied the emotion. Still, he reached for his cell phone, hoping to ring someone in the ME’s office. How much she suffered could reveal how expertly the killer killed—or chose to kill. That might be helpful. His phone had been off. That would explain why he had missed his wife’s calls.
The voice mail: “Alex, could you please call me? Trevor is acting like a little asshole.”
The next voice mail: “Alex, will you please answer your goddamned phone?”
The last voice mail: “Seriously, Alex, you’re going to be investigating another murder if you don’t get home.”
He dials his wife with trepidation. She sometimes scares the hell out of him.
“Well, where the hell have you been?” she snaps.
“You know where I’ve been, Kelly. What’s going on?”
“Just come home. Now.”
“Where’s Trevor?”
“In his room.”
“What did he do?”
“He sold pot to an undercover cop in Mesa this morning.”
It’s all Alex Mills can do not to throw the phone against the wall.
“This is just un-fucking-believable,” he tells his wife and hangs up.
He dashes for his car.
Getting in he notices the box he put the kachina doll in. He had meant to give it to Detective Psycho. Fuck. Really, fucking fuck!
He drives off before he even closes the door. His police radio is chirping. He shuts it off with a punch. Then he whips out onto Washington and heads for Seventh Street.
Gus Parker is looking for another crime scene. There’s a map of Phoenix on his computer screen. He stares, senses Phoenix staring back, as if the map is watching him think, like a chess master scoring his student’s every move, making him earn the taste of triumph. Ivy is sleeping at his feet right now, snoring a bit. He nudges her playfully, and she grunts. While others might look at the map of Phoenix and see a flat square of nothing, Gus sees a valley surrounded by the skyscrapers of nature, those majestic mountains, some with soaring fingers and jagged peaks: Estrella, Piestewa, Camelback, McDowell, Mummy, South Mountain, and more. He closes his eyes and searches. In the darkness he gets a jolt, as if someone has walked into the room and caught him off guard. “Oh, I didn’t see you there,” he hears himself say. But there is nobody there in the darkness. Just Gus Parker, his eyes closed, and a vision of a million stars. He watches as a blanket of celestial light and vapor fills the valley. Where others might see this vision as stupefying and brilliant, where others might see the promise of life and of God, Gus sees malevolence in clever disguise.
A star is dying.
In its place a black hole. In that black hole a murder. Gus squeezes his eyes shut even tighter, trying to interpret what he sees.
The black hole is a cave. That much is obvious. But he can’t see the victim. He can’t hear her scream. He’s listening, but all he hears are the sonic booms of the cosmos and Ivy barking. Gus opens his eyes. He looks down and sees her head in his lap. But he’s disoriented. He looks at the screen and sees the map he started with. It yields nothing. Except the black hole. The black hole of a cave is taunting him, begging him closer, and as he gets closer, as he inches toward it, God help him, the cave morphs into a vagina. He bolts back. Partly he’s sympathetic to the metaphor, a tip of the hat to the obvious, but he’s also confused as all get out. Which of course is metaphor, itself, for the plight of the modern man. He could sit here, of course, and ponder vagina of all things. But he can’t. He just can’t. The master stares back at him with hubris and disapproval. Fuck the chess master. Gus logs off.
“You want to go out and sing with the birds?” he asks the dog.
Ivy knows the word “bird.” She leaps into the air, jumping and yipping and follows Gus to the door. Gus watches her play for a while; he swears the birds are in on the game, as if they know to fly this way to romp around with their droopy friend. They sing. She barks. They chirp twice. She barks three times. They chirp three times. She barks them one better. Gus feels the smile growing across his face, the elasticity of his cheeks about to snap. There is a warmth rising in his chest much like, he imagines, the love a father has for a child.
“You come out of that room right now.”
“No.”
“Trevor, I’m not kidding.”
“Neither am I.”
The shouting begins. “I’ll bust this fucking door down,” Mills tells the sixteen-year-old. “Don’t think I won’t.”
He won’t. That’s his own father, Lyle Mills, bluffing, not Alex.
“Whatever, Dad.”
“Look, Trev, I’m not taking your shit. I’ll let them throw you in jail. Really I will.”
He won’t. That’s Lyle Mills, again. Not Alex.
No response from the kid.
“Trevor, do you hear me?”
Nothing.
Alex Mills feels the blood rising to his temples, the rage clenching in his fists. He doesn’t want to hurt the kid, but he wants to destroy something. The door would be fine right about now. He’d fucking bash it to pieces if Kelly were not hovering behind him.
“Where the hell did he get the pot?” he asks her in a whisper. He’s noticed that when he speaks quietly he calms himself. It was a hard behavior to learn, still a hard one to summon. But Kelly had taught him how to rein in his anger even when it most threatened to rip him apart.
“You can’t be angry at the world for the rest of your life,” she had told him.
“I’m not an angry person.” And he knew that deeply to be true.
“You internalize it until something happens, and no matter what that something is, you blow up.”
He had wanted to ignore her analysis, but faced with no evidence to the contrary, he had to concede her case. She had even helped him understand the source. Of course it was Lyle Mills, no huge surprise there, but it wasn’t just because of anger that the guy died; it was darker and more insidious than that. Alex Mills never forgave his father for killing himself. And he never forgave himself for not forgiving his father. There was no justice there. A life so brilliant snuffed out by its own righteousness. What kind of legacy was that to inherit? Alex had seen the danger, hadn’t he? But he chose not to speak up. Who was he to thwart the noble path of justice that Lyle Mills seemed, alone, to pave? Truth is he had not had the balls to give the man his due with an earful of brave honesty. So now, instead, he’s truly haunted and angry and he carries it around on his back, and Alex sometimes finds himself cussing in the shower or dreaming of the showdown that would have saved his father’s life, or wanting to smack Timothy Chase in the head, or something, and thank God for his wife because she had the fucking brilliance to discover this torture and intervene. And at least he’s trying. His whisper is his cue to her that he’s trying.
But she doesn’t know where Trevor got the pot.
“He won’t tell me,” she says.
“He’s going to have to tell us,” Alex insists.
Kelly’s standing there with her hands on her hips. “He may. He may not.”
“Great,” he says. “Fucking great.”
He backs away from Trevor’s door.
“What are you doing?” his wife asks.
“Clearing my head,” he replies. “Then I’m going to call the sergeant.”
“Seriously, Alex? He was arrested in Mesa, not Phoenix. Don’t drag Woods into this.”
Mills leads his wife from the hallway. “I’m not dragging Woods into anything,” he tells her. “I’m notifying him. And I suggest you notify your boss as well, Kelly. Unless you’d like him to read about it in the paper first.”
“Fine,” she says.
“You bailed his ass out in a hurry.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
Mills looks away from his wife, stares at a photo of Trevor in his football jersey above the fireplace. The kid’s smile is real. Trevor doesn’t fake anything. “You should have let him sit in jail,” he says to Kelly. “Maybe he would have learned something.”
“Easy for you to say. You weren’t around to make that decision.”
“You’re his mother,” he seethes.
She’s at his shoulder now. “Right. And you’re his father. That wasn’t a decision I was going to make alone.”
His arms are folded tightly across his chest. Again, he’s afraid he might explode. His anger is like a storm, bearing down on him, the thunder speaking in four-letter words, the lightning illuminating a hatred that touches the ground. He knows, of course, that like any storm, this will pass. The hatred unsettles him, though. “Fuck him,” he mutters.
“You’re overreacting,” Kelly tells him.
Wrong thing to say. Ever. Those are the kind of words that make him apocalyptic. But he pauses, nods, knows he can’t lose control, finds comfort in his wife’s voice even if it did utter the ultimate smackdown.
“Maybe,” he says.
“In my gut I know this isn’t Trevor,” his wife insists.
“How much pot was it?”
“You want to read the report?”
“No. I want you to tell me.”
She clears her throat. “Under two pounds. With intent to sell.”
“Are you fucking kidding me?” he howls. “Where does my kid come up with two pounds of pot to sell?”
“Exactly what the prosecutor will want to know,” Kelly says.
He supposes a sixteen-year-old can find pot anywhere. Especially in Phoenix where a “run to the border” is as easy, yet far more dangerous, as a run to the drive-through. But it’s not as if Trevor is running his own pipeline. That’s preposterous. He has to have connections. He’s selling it for someone who’s selling it for someone who may be getting it from Los Angeles or San Diego or Denver, for Christ’s sake. This could have nothing to do with the border. Trevor is not smart enough to know a cartel when he sees one and not stupid enough to go looking. He’s a boy. Not much of a rebel. Up until now.
Mills steadies himself against the kitchen counter. “If only I could put my fist through a wall,” he says in the ironic calm of a whisper.
“You’re not that type,” his wife reminds him.
He waits about twenty minutes and then returns to Trevor’s door.
“I hate to threaten you,” he says, “but if you don’t come out here I’m taking you off the team.”
“What?” The voice inside is defiant.
“I said you’re off the team if you don’t come out here.”
“I thought you were going to bust my door down.”
“I’m sorry, Trev. I was angry. But I’m serious about football.”
The door cracks open. His son stands in the sliver of acquiescence. “What do you want?”
“I want you to come out of that room and talk to me.”
“Where’s Mom?”
“She’s in her office on the computer. This is between you and me, Trevor. She’s been through enough with you this morning.”
Trevor slips past him, avoiding eye contact, and Mills follows his son to the family room. Trevor reaches for the remote and turns on the television. Mills locks a hand firmly around his son’s wrist. “Drop it,” he says. “Have some respect.”
The boy grunts and surrenders the remote. The television goes black. “Jesus Christ,” the kid says.
“Sit down, Trevor. And look at me.”
Trevor rolls his eyes, and Mills laughs at the trademark of adolescent petulance. “What’s so funny?” the kid asks.
“You. Trying to act like such a tough guy.”
“Whatever.”
They’re sitting diagonally across from each other, a thick wood coffee table between them. “Your mother tells me you were arrested after practice this morning.”
Trevor nods.
“How long has this been going on?”
The kid looks away. “This was my first time.”
“No it wasn’t,” Mills says before his son can take another breath or say another word.
“Yes, Dad, it was.”
“You’re lying to me, Trevor. I listen to liars ev—”
“Every day, ‘so I sure as hell know when my own kid is lying.’ Heard it all my life, Dad.”
“Look, Trevor. All I want is the facts. Don’t sit there worrying about punishment. Don’t even sit there thinking I’m judging you. I just want the facts.”
“Okay. I was selling it for a friend.”
“Well, I know you weren’t growing it, Trev. I figured you got it somewhere. But ‘a friend’ is the easy answer.”
Like Kelly, his son has marbles of perfect sky for eyes. He has his mother’s glare as well. “So?” Trevor says.
“So, you need to tell me who this friend is and how long you’ve been selling this shit. . . .”
“Dad, look, it won’t happen again. I swear. Can we just drop it?”
“Drop it? Are you kidding? We’re not dropping anything. His name?”
Trevor shakes his head and shrugs. “I can’t.”
Mills leans forward, wearing a sly smile. “Again, let me invoke the threat of taking you off the team.”
“I didn’t tell the cops, and I can’t tell you. Which is really the same thing, right?”
“Don’t be a smartass, Trevor. I’m not talking to you like a cop. I’m talking to you as a father who’s going to ground your ass for the rest of your life if you don’t drop the attitude.”
Another roll of the eyes. “Sounds like you’re interrogating me.”
“Of course I’m interrogating you,” Mills thunders. “Just like any parent would interrogate any kid who was stupid, fucking stupid enough to sell dope to a cop. How does that sound, Trevor, more fatherly?”
Trevor fidgets on the couch. He’s grown a lot physically in the past year. He’s almost his dad’s height but bulkier. He’s been lifting weights, and his muscles, particularly in the upper body, are bulging ; he’s begun to look like all his friends. Mills never looked like this as a kid. He was lean and fit, perfect for running track where he excelled, but never jockish like his son. Jocks back in his day were dolts. Trevor is no dolt. He’s as smart as his mother, wicked and quick. It also explains why he’s so haughty and stubborn.
“Dad, I’m not going to narc on one of my friends.”
“Is the friendship that important? Or is it the money?”
The kid curls his lip like a bully. “It’s not the money.”
“How much do you make? What do you do with the money?”
“I’m saving to buy a car. Is that all right with you?”
“Never for one minute will you own a car if you’re living under my roof. Unless, of course, you start naming names. No names, buddy, no privileges. Period.”
Trevor exhales a sigh of disgust and resignation. “I was just doing a favor, Dad. I�
��m not in the drug-dealing business.”
“Well, that’s a relief.” Mills’s phone rings. He ignores it. “You’re ready to take the fall for this ‘favor’ you were doing?”
“Yup.”
“They’ll cut you a deal if you name names.”
“I don’t need a deal, Dad. It’s a first offense.”
“It’s two pounds, you jackass. With intent to sell. You’re looking at jail time.”
“No one’s going to put a minor in jail for less than two pounds,” Trevor retorts. “Now who’s the jackass?”
That’s when Alex Mills gets up and lunges at his son.
“What are you doing?” Trevor cries.
“Get up! Get up and call the coach. Tell him you’re off the team.”
“Dad, let go of me.”
Alex Mills has his son by the collar. “You are my son, do you hear that?” He tightens the grip on Trevor’s neckline. “You will do as I say. You will not give me or your mother any shit. Pick up the phone.”
The two tussle for a moment, and a lamp falls over. It’s a heavy lamp of Mexican pottery. It lands with a thud, then breaks open with a small explosion of pieces. They freeze, stunned by the sound of violence. Mills is still gripping his son by the neck. Their eyes meet as if they know what’s coming next. The shame and the guilt are that palpable.
Kelly storms into the room. “What the hell is going on in here?”
Trevor breaks free from his father. “He’s taking me off the team,” he cries.
“Let’s all sit down and discuss this,” she says in a perfect esquire pitch.
“The sitting down and discussing is over,” Mills tells his wife. “If he doesn’t name names there’s nothing to talk about.”
“Trevor, go back to your room,” Kelly orders her son. He skulks away. “Sit down, Alex.”
He complies. She looks at him with an open face. Mills doesn’t understand how, but Kelly seems to maintain a hopeful calm. Like maybe she already worked out a deal for Trevor. Or maybe she knows something that Alex doesn’t. “You got a plan?” he asks her.
“He’s a good kid. He’s never been in trouble.”
“It’s two pounds of pot for Christ’s sake! With intent to sell. That’s a lot of fucking trouble.”
Desert Remains Page 8